The incremental deployment of progressively newer technologies by telephony service providers has created, in many cases, a wide range of telecommunications equipment and operations that must be integrated to provide reliable service to subscribers. For example, a telephony provider may have network elements and operational support systems (OSSs) that have been in place for years (known in the art as legacy systems) as well as newer network elements and their associated OSSs that allow more efficient and/or more comprehensive operational support. Thus, there have been, in some cases, substantial duplications of the same functionality using different technologies within service sites for telephony service providers.
The above statements are particularly true for telephony provider central offices and the OSSs to which the central offices connect. In particular, referring to prior art FIG. 1, note that although certain OSSs 10 may be physically coalesced in a single data center 14 as shown, there may be a substantial number of different communication technologies used to monitor and control central offices 20 from such remote locations as data center 14. FIG. 1 illustrates six communication technologies typically used in externally communicating with and controlling devices within central offices 20 from remote locations. They are:
(1.1) A TCP/IP wide area network 24 for high bandwidth communications using the well known standardized TCP/IP protocol. Note that the term wide area network (WAN) is hereinafter intended to refer to any physical network technology that spans larger geographical distances (e.g., from tens to thousands of miles). Further note that TCP/IP is an abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol wherein the Internet Protocol is known as a "network layer" mprotocol and the Transmission Control Protocol is known as a "transport layer" protocol that is constructed on top of the Internet Protocol. Thus, the Internet Protocol (IP) is responsible for establishing, maintaining, and terminating a network connection between two communicating network nodes. The IP is also responsible for transferring information along an established connection. The TCP, on the other hand, is responsible for providing information between communicating network nodes wherein there is an agreed upon level of communication quality. In particular, TCP transmits data as full duplex data streams across a particular network path or "connection" that has been determined between the communicating network nodes. Further TCP/IP is widely used as a foundation upon which higher level or "application layer" protocols depend. More precisely, TCP/IP is a fourth layer protocol, wherein the higher layers are denoted: the session layer (5.sup.th), presentation layer (6.sup.th) and the application layer (7.sup.th)Thus, (as one skilled in the art will understand) the TCP/IP network 24 maybe utilized for communicating in anyone of a number of telephony network management application protocols, for example: PA1 (1.2) The public telephone network 28 for allowing central office off-site technicians dial access to a central office 20 for monitoring and/or correcting network element 48 malfunctions; PA1 (1.3) An asynchronous proprietary network 52 for establishing communications between network element 48 data ports and "UNIX" based host systems at OSSs 10 of the data center 14, wherein a proprietary network protocol such as "URP" by Datakit is used. Note that a terminal/host computational paradigm may be used between a network element and OSSs when communicating using the network 28. That is, the network element, or more precisely, one of its data ports, behaves like a terminal in that it is controlled by a single host OSS 10 computational device and therefore the data port is dependent on this host for instructing it as to when it should communicate with the host; PA1 (1.4) One or more private point-to-point lines 56 between a central office 20 and a data center 14, wherein transmissions on these dedicated lines may use any number of protocols. However, it may be likely that such transmissions do not use any protocol whatsoever since such point-to-point lines often are viewed as an extension of the network elements 48 so that the operating systems of the network elements are accessible from a remote location such as data center 14; PA1 (1.5) A X.25 network 54 for communicating using the X.25 communication protocol, wherein information is encapsulated in (or converted to) X.25 packets for transmission. Note that a packet assembler/disassembler 56 must be provided at each terminating node of this network to decode and encode X.25 packets from and to the network 54, respectively. Further note that a protocol translator 58 may be connected between packet assembler/disassembler 56 and the network elements 48 for translating the protocol of the disassembled X.25 information into one or more specialized network element 48 protocols such as: PA1 (1.6) One or more synchronous networks 60 for supporting primarily IBM host applications of OSSs 10 that require communications with various legacy devices (i.e., technologically outdated devices) such as devices using 3270 terminal emulation software. Note that in some cases communications on these networks use a bisynchronous polled protocol wherein the absence of constant polling by an OSS 10 renders the legacy devices and printers 64 attached to synchronous cluster controller 66 useless. PA1 (2.1) UDP/IP (i.e., User Datagram Protocol/Internet Protocol) is a communications protocol for sending and receiving packetized data wherein UDP/IP uses IP to perform lower level tasks such as addressing and packet communications without substantial error checking for validating substantial error checking for validating an error free communication transmission. Accordingly, the UDP portion of this protocol uses a feature of the IP that does not require a connection determination and setup process prior to sending data packets over a network (e.g., wide area network). Note that typical telephony applications using UDP/UP are applications providing, for example, public telephone switching network monitoring and alarming services to a telephony service provider. PA1 (2.2) OSI (i.e., Open System Interconnection) is a highly structured protocol based upon the seven layer OSI communications model which defmes communications interfaces and capabilities from the physical interface of a device to a standardized interface for programmed applications. The OSI protocol uses an E.164 network addressing specification which significantly differs from the TCP/IP "four dot", 32 bit address notation (described in detail herein below). PA1 (3.1) each central office's local area network connected to the same wide area network by T-1 communication lines, PA1 (3.2) the local area networks and the wide area network using an identical standardized protocol, and PA1 (3.3) a uniform addressing scheme for network element communication ports across such central offices as discussed above.
(i) CMIP/CMIS, an application protocol for managing telephony network elements. In particular, CMIP/CMIS is used for communicating with network element communication ports, that utilize OSI networking standards as provided by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO-8073, or, PA2 (ii) SNMP (Simple Network Monitoring Protocol), a standardized internet network management protocol for monitoring network elements having communication ports utilizing the IP. PA2 (i) E2A: a telephony protocol developed by AT&T for transmitting state changes and alarm notices between legacy network elements and associated OSSs. PA2 (ii) Synder: a synchronous protocol developed by AT&T for use in controlling digital access to telephony cross connect equipment. PA2 (iii) TBOS: a protocol developed by AT&T for use in providing network element alarms to an OSS. This protocol is based on a structured block of 512 bits. PA2 (iv) BX.25: a protocol defined by AT&T Bell Laboratories for use in providing multiple communication sessions or connections over a single communication channel. This protocol is used only on AT&T manufactured equipment.
Given the lack of integration between external communication connections to a central office 20 as FIG. 1 illustrates, it is not surprising that it is very difficult to provide a uniform or consistent management of the external communications on these connections. Moreover, note that although FIG. 1 shows only a single communication line 80 between various communication ports on network elements 48 and other central office devices communicating with the central office external connections, it is important to note that the thick lines within central office 20 represent a plurality of distinct communication lines having, potentially, a distinct communication line per network element 48. Thus, there is potentially a large number of communication lines 80 internal to each central office 20 to be managed. However, since the communication lines 80 have no device in common, it is substantially not possible to uniformly manage the communication in such a center office.
Further note that due substantially to the lack of uniform management of both external and internal communications of a central office 20, there are minimal security features to prohibit unauthorized access to a central office 20 as well as potentially other telephony provider sites via one of the external connections once access to a central office 20 is obtained. In particular, there may be substantial risk that hackers gain access to, for example, network elements 48 in a central office 20 via an off-site processing unit 72 (e.g., a combination of a personal computer and a modem) and the public telephone network 28. Further, there is a risk that if a hacker gains access to a central office 20, then he/she may be able to also gain access to other central offices 20 or a data center 14 by navigating central office external connections.
Thus, it would be advantageous to have a central office architecture that allows better management and increased security for both internal and external communications of a central office. In particular, it would be advantageous to have a central office architecture wherein the internal communications are routed through one or more common devices allowing both better access permissions checking and reducing the number of distinct communication lines between central office devices. Further, it would be advantageous to have a central office architecture wherein communications between telephony provider service sites are provided substantially by a single wide area network wherein security measures may be applied straightforwardly and uniformly.